The Sign of the Loaves (V): The Spirit and the Flesh
The Sign of the Loaves (V): The Spirit and the Flesh
Proper 16/14th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B; John 6: 56-69
Just as last week, the Gospel reading opens by repeating some words (“the story so far”) to assist us with continuity across this long discourse. Eating Jesus’ flesh and blood gives eternal life, this constitutes “abiding” in him, and he is the eternal bread from heaven, contrasted with the manna of the Exodus (and by implication with the bread of the recent feeding miracle itself too). This might have seemed a high note on which to end this long conversation on bread, emphasizing abundance, life, and inclusion. That is not to be however, as we find the passage as a whole ending with notes of discord, and then with a clarity which is not quite what all the characters (or we ourselves) might have hoped for.
This is actually not just the end of the loaves story, but the turning point in John’s Gospel between Jesus’ Galilean ministry and his fateful time in Jerusalem. For John, this episode functions in ways comparable to multiple stories in the Synoptic Gospels: Jesus’ rejection in the Galilean synagogue (see Mark 6:1-6), Peter’s confession (see Mark 8:29), and the prediction of Judas’ betrayal (see Mark 14:8).1
John’s account of the conversation with the crowd ends with the surprise that “He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum” (v.59). The repetition of the fact that he was at Capernaum (see v. 24) and the new information about the synagogue—most readers might have assumed a less formal setting—emphasize Jesus’ role as a teacher of Israel. While conflict will then ensue, this time it is not between Jesus and “the Jews,” but between or among those who are his disciples (all, of course, also Jews).
The responses to all of this bread (or flesh) that have been so much discussed then unfold. The reality of a coming betrayal (vv. 64, 71) is anticipated by the departure of many followers (v. 66). The result of Jesus’ spectacular gift to the crowd thus turns out to be not an enlarged following, but a reduced one. This also provides us with a window into the interests and experience of John’s own readership, who may have seen people who professed to be followers fall away.
Many of Jesus’ disciples now balk at the teaching about the bread of life (v. 60), because it is “difficult,” meaning they find it problematic rather than complex. Sometimes commentators focus on the curious language of “flesh” and “blood” and its cannibalistic (and/or eucharistic, or sacrificial) overtones as the stumbling-block, not least relative to the prohibition of consuming (any) blood in the Torah. Yet the objection already made back in v. 52: “how can this man give us his flesh to eat” (not “how outrageous to suggest cannibalism or not keeping kosher”), suggests a problem of implausibility rather than of moral or religious outrage; it is reminiscent of the nonplussed reaction of Nicodemus to the idea of rebirth (see 3:4). It doesn’t make any sense, until it does.
Here though it is not so much that they don’t understand it, but that they do. The flesh-and-blood images may still add to the force of the passage. First, they function to emphasize the misunderstanding, as happens so often in John. In fact this verse is ambiguous; it might mean “who can accept it” (i.e., the teaching), as the NRSV and others translate, but the Greek also means “who can accept him.” The dual meaning is apt, since this teaching is really not about ideas or ethics independently, but about accepting Jesus himself completely and joining in community (“abiding”) with him and others who do the same. So they do understand it, to that extent at least, and that is the problem.
When it does make sense, another purpose of the flesh and blood language may be clearer. The similarity with the Synoptic Last Supper noted before may be important, not because of any eucharistic connections per se, but because of the implied theme of mortality, and the unavoidable connection with Jesus’ fate to which this language alludes. While we know John can introduce this theme of suffering-as-exaltation at any point in his narrative, not just when it is to take place, this whole bread passage is now being revealed as a crucial point in the narrative, just before the focus will shift to Jerusalem and the cross.
So when Jesus responds to the scepticism of the disciples with a counter-bid, something that by implication would be even harder to believe or accept than the necessity to ingest him, he alludes precisely to this paradoxical triumph:
‘Does this offend you? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe’ (vv. 61-64a)
This vision of the Son ascending to where he was is both a reference to his divine origins but also for John an allusion to the paradoxical exaltation of the cross, as in his not dissimilar exchange with the uncomprehending Nicodemus (see 3:13-15). So while the Capernaum crowd had come for more bread and had been disappointed, now disciples who had come for something else, something apparently closer to a genuinely religious objective, also balked because of how Jesus’ work is to be fulfilled.
Jesus’ dismissal of “the flesh” here is startling after the emphasis on flesh in the earlier verses, but Jesus had always been speaking of his flesh (or the flesh of the Son of Man - vv. 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56!), which it turns out is not at all the same as “the flesh.” The contrast between “flesh” and “spirit” here though is not “material” versus “spiritual” or something similar; Jesus is not touting spirituality over economics for instance. The fact that the Word has become flesh (1: 14) makes that clear enough.
What is of “the spirit” rather than “the flesh” in John is whatever—material or immaterial—is aligned with the purposes of God. The followers who lose heart now seem actually to have placed their hopes in “the flesh” rather than in Jesus’ flesh, perhaps because they want the movement to grow and succeed without this difficult path and all it entails— as in the immediately following verses we do not read, when Jesus’ brothers try to advise him on strategic communications (see 7:1-9). So “spirituality” itself can be entirely of “the flesh,” when it is about ourselves and not about the one who became flesh and what he tells us about the nature of reality.
Jesus’ closing exchange with Peter on behalf of the twelve presents a counterpoint to the departure of disaffected followers. The reference to the twelve may also be a nod to the coming events, since they are not prominent in this Gospel except as the implicit audience for the very long version of the Last Supper that will follow (chapters 13-17). For now, Jesus asks if they remain. Peter’s response is apt; they stay not because this journey seems appealing, but because they must: “‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Discipleship is not an attractive choice, it is a gift of the Father (v. 65), a necessity, like bread.
C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John; an Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text. New York, Macmillan, 1956, p.302